Author
Topic: Under no circumstances will I be attending your stupid birthday dinner (Read 25931 times)

makes me glad that my friends still prefer to have their fabulous drinking parties at their homes to celebrate any and all occasions. I have, can, and will take my friends out for their birthdays but its usually one-on-one or as a double date (me, DH, friend, and friend's SO). My friends cannot do the same for me, financially, and I know and understand that. My birthday rotates between being an at-home party and something private with DH (our birthdays are 2 weeks apart; every year one of us gets a party, the other gets private dinner/event and we rotate every year)

Most recently, DH and I met up with FIL, SMIL, step-bro, and step-sis for SMIL's birthday. We knew we were going to dinner, but only as of lunchtime that same day. DH and I covered SMIL's meal, leaving FIL to only need to cover his own and his step-children. This still falls into what I'm willing to do - cover my food and that of the person we're celebrating. If someone else wants to help cover the celebrant's bill, I'll split it with them, but I am NOT just going to split the entire bill among people.

The whole thing is really interesting to me because it's something I haven't run into too often. Among friends, we paid for what we ordered if we couldn't get separate checks and split the GOH's (But never GOH's SO. Seriously?!). Most of the time, going out with coworkers in DC, we paid for what we ordered, especially as we usually went out for Happy Hour, and drink costs vary widely.

It's always been among more distant coworkers or newly-met individuals (I'm thinking specifically of when I was an intern and went out with the other interns a time or two here) that the "split it equally" meme has emerged -- and I've generally made it a point not to go out again with those individuals precisely because I almost invariably ended up paying at least a little more than I had planned and over what I had actually ordered.

Now I think I have enough of a backbone to say, if someone wanted to split things evenly, "I'm sorry, but I only ordered X. Here is $YY to cover it and the tip, and $Z to contribute to GOH's meal."

And to be honest your reason for them doing it this way is actually in deed laziness. . . i.e. trying to do less work. It may be more work to co-ordinate, but it still can be done, I also don't see why they can't still add on the tip on separate bills. Do I want the waitress to get stiffed? No, not at all, but if some cheep skate does not pony up and i get stiffed because the restaurant will not do separate checks, im sure not going to tip more than a penny more than the mandatory cuz i am already paying too much. Had i had my own check, i would have been far more generous.

It's not laziness, believe me, there is nothing lazy about waiting on 12 half drunk 30 year old that are all trying look posh and don't really know how to do it.

The problem comes with the ordering. Trying to keep track while 12 people are all randomly ordering, or people ordering for other people causes a mess. And then trying to figure out mistakes, "I didn't order the salad, she did- well, yeah I ordered it, but it was for her. Oh she already paid and left? well too bad I'm not paying for it." Happens way more than you'd ever think.

It also makes it easier for people to walk out on a check. You think those polite talking mild mannered middle aged people won't ask for a split check and then duck out without paying? Think again. I am so tired of hearing how restaurants are lazy for not splitting checks and so glad i am not a server anymore.

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It's alright, man. I'm only bleeding, man. Stay hungry, stay free, and do the best you can. ~Gaslight Anthem

I've never spent that much for a dinner in my life. Doing so as a grad student would have been impossible - that was about 1/3 of my monthly rent, or about 3 weeks of groceries.

I don't mind going out for someone's birthday within reason. Within reason means that there is the option for someone on a tight budget to order separately, or that the venue is chosen with the budget of the most cash strapped member of the party taken into account. In general, graduate students don't go to upscale steak houses unless someone else is paying. Graduate students also rarely order from a wine list.

As a grad student, I agree. I don't have a problem with going out to dinner to celebrate someone's birthday in principle, even if everyone is paying their own way. I do think that the restaurant selection should be reasonably priced. I also think people who order 3x what everyone else has and then expect to split the check evenly are selfish and rude. The person who ordered a $15 dish and a glass of wine shouldn't be stuck helping to foot the bill for the person who ordered the $30 lobster, multiple mixed drinks and an appetizer.

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abbyas

I'm also in New York City, and had a very similar situation happen. Large group of people out to dinner with boyfriend and I on very limited budgets. We ordered no appetizers and stuck to soda, but at the end of the meal was asked to pay for everyone else's appetizers, deserts, limoncellos and champagne. None of which was offered to be shared. After we stuck to our guns regarding budget (gently, nicely), we got a lengthy email telling us we had to pony up for everyone and were selfish.

Next year, when the same group sent out invites, we suggested a less expensive restaurant and again were called cheap. And this isn't the first time this has happened. It's an epidemic in New York. I'm with the author 100%. People just don't think about the situation of everyone around them. And between 25 and kids, there are these social rules and mores built by people that either never have to worry about money or have eating out much higher on their budget importance than most of everyone else.

With my group of friends, we set standards for birthday dinner outings, sent in an email to the whole group after a lengthly discussion. But we all knew each other, so that was possible. A lack of communication about what is expected is the culprit here. However, this is a situation of a large group of people who don’t always know each other getting together, so I don’t know how communicating would work. They all have different ideas of how the dinners should be paid for, which is of course causing discord.

Do you think it would work if the invitation included how the payment process would go? Such as it’s all going to be different checks, or everyone’s going to pool their money together on one check? Then nobody would be caught off guard, or order too much, or find themselves subsidizing someone else’s $$ meal when they ordered something much less $$.

I'm also in New York City, and had a very similar situation happen. Large group of people out to dinner with boyfriend and I on very limited budgets. We ordered no appetizers and stuck to soda, but at the end of the meal was asked to pay for everyone else's appetizers, deserts, limoncellos and champagne. None of which was offered to be shared. After we stuck to our guns regarding budget (gently, nicely), we got a lengthy email telling us we had to pony up for everyone and were selfish.

Next year, when the same group sent out invites, we suggested a less expensive restaurant and again were called cheap. And this isn't the first time this has happened. It's an epidemic in New York. I'm with the author 100%. People just don't think about the situation of everyone around them. And between 25 and kids, there are these social rules and mores built by people that either never have to worry about money or have eating out much higher on their budget importance than most of everyone else.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.

If I were to be in this situation, I think I'd just plonk down what I owed and leave it up to everyone else to haggle. That is, I usually remember what I ordered--say, the entree was $15 and the drink $5--and just add tax and tip onto that.

I'm also in New York City, and had a very similar situation happen. Large group of people out to dinner with boyfriend and I on very limited budgets. We ordered no appetizers and stuck to soda, but at the end of the meal was asked to pay for everyone else's appetizers, deserts, limoncellos and champagne. None of which was offered to be shared. After we stuck to our guns regarding budget (gently, nicely), we got a lengthy email telling us we had to pony up for everyone and were selfish.

Next year, when the same group sent out invites, we suggested a less expensive restaurant and again were called cheap. And this isn't the first time this has happened. It's an epidemic in New York. I'm with the author 100%. People just don't think about the situation of everyone around them. And between 25 and kids, there are these social rules and mores built by people that either never have to worry about money or have eating out much higher on their budget importance than most of everyone else.

I just cannot figure out what is going through people’s minds who act this way. How can someone think it’s OK to order all kinds of expensive food and drink and expect others to pay for it? Would they also think it would be OK to go on a shopping trip with a friend and insist on going to the register together and “splitting the bill” even though they had picked out a mink coat and the friend was buying socks? I know, ridiculous example, but the principle is the same, and the restaurant experiences seem just as indefensible to me.

So it is possible to spend $168 per person. Which doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.

Exactly. I read reviews in the New York Times, so I know that at a high end restaurant this isn't unusual. It's the idea of proposing a high end restaurant for a pay-your-own-way birthday dinner for people of wildly differing incomes, and then splitting the cost equally regardless of who ordered what. For a lot of people restaurants like this are either totally off the radar, or saved for very special once in a lifetime occasions, not someone else's birthday.

For some people in this sort of situation I think that the fact that people are on budgets simply doesn't register - either they've forgotten their own tight student days, or they've never been in a position where paying an extra $100 at dinner means you don't eat for the rest of the week.